Whisper Network

On May 4, Rosalita works as if nothing happened. She knows she will not need to work at Truviv soon. She watches 20-year-old Crystal, hoping that the foreman will not fire Crystal when he notices her pregnancy, and asks when Crystal’s baby is due. Crystal is due in August; the baby’s father still has not decided whether to stay of leave, though Crystal wants the baby either way. Rosalita comforts her, saying that she raised Salomon alone. Rosalita asks Crystal to write down her address so that she can pass along Salomon’s old baby stuff. Crystal is upset by this, claiming that she does not need charity, but Rosalita counters: “When another woman offers to help you, you take it. You understand?“ (440).

Three days before May 18, Ames’s death was ruled a suicide. Sitting at a trendy restaurant, Sloane tells Grace and Ardie that it feels like she hasn’t seen them in forever. Ardie reminds her that it has only been four days. Grace orders wine and the friends learn that she is no longer breastfeeding. No one knows whether Katherine is still working at Truviv. Sloane tells her friends that Derek has decided that he wants to stay married, though moving past her affair will be hard with the amount of press about Ames. Also, Abigail has finally made a friend.

The friends start their first work meeting: They have all left Truviv and are starting a practice together. They will also offer Rosalita a job. Grace nervously admits that she cannot join the practice yet because she has started a new medication for postpartum depression and needs some time to sort her life out. Sloane says that Grace can join them whenever. Continuing the honesty, Ardie reveals to her friends that Ames raped her. She apologizes for not having warned Sloane. Sloane is sad to think how much Ardie must have hated her when she started sleeping with her rapist. Ardie tells her that she was impossible to hate. Grace starts to cry, full of guilt. Then, she confesses that she killed Ames.

Grace says that she was the last person to see Ames alive. That morning, he messaged Grace “I thought we were friends” (452), and she was so upset that she went to speak to him in person on the smoking deck. When he suddenly bent towards Grace to light his cigarette off of hers, she twitched in fear and accidentally cut his face with her wedding ring. He called Grace a bitch and she told him to “go take a flying leap” (453)—this comment is why Grace blames herself for Ames’s death. Sloane tells Grace that this comment does not make her responsible for Ames’s death.

Ardie adds that Grace was not actually the last person to see Ames alive—Ardie knows that Katherine met with Ames after Grace’s conversation. What Ardie does not admit to her friends is that, concerned for Katherine’s safety, Ardie went to the 18th floor, where she saw Ames yelling at Katherine. When Katherine tried to escape, he did not let her leave, so she slapped him. Before Ardie knew it, Ames was choking Katherine against the parapet and screaming at her. Ardie grabbed Ames and shoved him. When he started to fall, Katherine pushed him over the wall. Without this final push, Ames might have never fallen, or Ardie might have pulled him back to safety. Now, Ardie is almost able to believe that Ames jumped.

The first-person plural narrator adds that women have been trained to keep secrets and share them only with each other, covertly showing one another whom and what to avoid, how to look, etc. For a long time, the ability to do all this in silence kept the women safe. But as women start to wonder whom exactly the silence benefits, they become less secretive and take up more space. Each time a woman takes up space, it is for all women. Their legacy will be their loud voices, telling the truth. Everyone else’s job is to listen.